Rob Ford and journalists get passive-aggressive during World Press Freedom Week

Here’s a scenario that feels more like satire than real life: Rob Ford marked World Press Freedom Week with a speech about the importance of free press at the city hall rotunda, and then booted it out of there when actual reporters tried to ask him a few questions. The Toronto Star refrained from bringing up the Daniel Dale debacle in its coverage of the event—but, in a move that’s either cheeky or passive-aggressive, it threw a pair of links to the Dale controversy into the story. Other news agencies also wielded the objective tone like a weapon, using the artful juxtaposition of facts to sneakily skewer the mayor. Thomas Saras, president of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, which organized the reception, pointed out that relationships between politicians and media will always be strained—to which we say: “strained” would be a vast improvement on the current state of affairs. [Toronto Star]